


The High School After High School

by Neigedens



Category: Community
Genre: Humor, M/M, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-03
Updated: 2010-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neigedens/pseuds/Neigedens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Troy had disappeared. He's already been gone one day, and he has nine school days left before Greendale's attendance policies (which are, as Jeff Winger has always called them, positively high schoolian) catch up with him. Abed isn't so worried about that; he's got bigger thoughts on his mind than just truancy. Abed's almost positive that Troy's been kidnapped, but the first hurdle, of course, is always convincing others to see what's right in front of their eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 1.06, 1.04, and probably a few others. The title is a quote from [The Home Economics Story](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoqtTrb3I0w). Thanks to [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/ncc_gqmf/profile)[**ncc_gqmf**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/ncc_gqmf/) for beta-ing and [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/custardpringle/profile)[**custardpringle**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/custardpringle/) for the constant support/word wars. ♥

The High School After High School  
(Or, The Adventure of the Kidnapped Quarterback)

  
The spaghetti dinner was an essential part of the football team's fundraising strategy. Unlike most schools, which lavished endowments on their sports programs and left the others to languish, Greendale underfunded all extracurriculars about equally, so the football team held the spaghetti dinner and hoped to be able to buy their first new sets of shoulder pads since 1986. The dinner was well-attended due to an unusual amount of enthusiasm surrounding the Human Beings' coming game against the City College Goats. The Greendale students perceived that their chances were about as poor as always, but the chance, however unlikely, that the game would _not_ be a complete and total blowout fueled the school's excitement. And of course no Greendale student, young or old, could keep away from the lure of cheap garlic bread, so the cafeteria in the student union was quite full.

"What's the matter, Troy?" asked Shirley, after Troy had barely acknowledged when the Dean finished making the announcement about the game. "Aren't you excited about your game?"

Troy stuck his fork in his plate of spaghetti apathetically. "I don't know. Marisol's not going to be able to play, so we're a woman short."

There was a pause. "Marisol...was the pregnant woman, wasn't she?" asked Jeff.

"Yeah."

"Well, it can't be that hard to replace her."

"Will you do it?"

"No!"

"See?"

Jeff shook his head. "Look, Troy, you were Riverside High's star running back--"

"Quarterback," muttered Britta.

"Quarterback," said Jeff without missing a beat. "I'm pretty sure you've got enough sway at this _community college_ to find a replacement for a woman who hasn't been able to eat tuna for months."

"I didn't realize that was such a status symbol in the Winger household," said Britta.

"She won't be able to look at any more spaghetti dinners, I'll tell you that much," said Shirley, who, with an expression of mild distaste, had been watching Abed as he carefully twirled the noodles around his fork. "Nuh-uh."

Jeff went on. "Just find a man...or a woman, I guess, who's about as wide as a pregnant woman and you'll never even know she's gone."

"Who starts playing football when they're pregnant, anyway?" asked Britta to the table in general.

"Oh, football's an excellent prenatal sport," said Pierce. "Keeps the blood moving. Toughens the child up _in utero_, as it were."

"The doctor told her she should make sure to keep active," Troy explained, "and all the yoga classes were filled up too quickly. The doctor said she could play into her third trimester or until her ankles got too swollen."

"Oh, that's nice," said Shirley as Britta shook her head and stood up to get more salad. "Does she know, is it a girl or a boy?"

~

  
Within the next week, Marisol had her baby and Troy found an excellent replacement for her in George Pluckenpole, a tall, broad twentysomething with the slightly over-pleasing manner necessary for someone with a name like George Pluckenpole. He had been kept from trying out for the team the first time around, he said, by an allergic reaction to shellfish. He had played in high school and claimed to have a small bit of experience coaching his son's peewee team. That, honestly, was more than Troy could have hoped for.

Everyone liked him; Marisol had pronounced him an adequate substitute and her baby boy had spit up on him, which came as close as he was going to get to universal approval. No one, including Marisol, saw any problem with him staying on the team even after the baby got on solid food and she rejoined the squad. He was smart, talented, likable, and he was about as good as Troy, except Troy was lighter and could run much faster than him. Troy, naturally, disliked him, but he could complain to Abed.

"He's too perfect," said Troy, pacing the length of the dorm room. Abed was eating cereal in front of the TV again, but he looked up often enough to reassure Troy that he was listening. "_Too_ perfect. Do you know what I mean?"

Abed considered. "No."

"It's like," began Troy, then shook his head. "Look, sometimes you're so good at something that people just hate you for it. Like, you know how you can name every film Bill Murray's ever been in?"

"Yes."

"Well, somewhere out there, there's probably someone who hates you for it and is really jealous of you and would, like, punch you in the face because they're so bitter. Football is like that for me."

"People have punched you in the face?"

"More than once. But for this guy, people want to punch him in the face over _everything_."

"It seems unlikely," said Abed.

"What, that someone could be good at everything?"

"No, that someone would hate me for knowing all of Bill Murray's movies. You think they'd appreciate meeting another fan."

"Oh. Yeah, that's a good point," said Troy. He stopped pacing and stared at Abed, who was about to lean to the side so he could see the TV around Troy, but thought better of it just in time. "Also, his name's Pluckenpole," said Troy aggrievedly. "The hell is that?"

"It's pretty comical," Abed agreed.

"Ha. Yeah. Pluckenpole." Troy laughed and sat down next to Abed on the futon. "See, this is why I like hanging out with you, Abed. You always seem to get what I'm talking about." He put his arm around Abed's shoulders and leaned back to watch _Hogan's Heroes_ with him.

Abed wasn't sure if Troy had meant to be sarcastic when he said that or not. He stared into his cereal bowl, which now contained nothing but milk, and then back up at Colonel Klink's be-monocled face. By the time something had occurred to him to say about the Pluckenpole problem, they were sitting close enough together that Abed supposed it didn't really matter anymore. Instead he drank the rest of his milk, set the bowl on the desk with the others, and slid down a bit into the futon so he could rest his head on Troy's arm. When he did so, Troy turned his head and they stared at each other.

"Hey," said Troy in a deeper, throatier voice. Which Abed thought was pointless because he obviously already had Abed's attention.

"Hi," said Abed, feeling immediately that it had been the wrong thing to say. He still felt shaky about this sometimes, about when you were supposed to move your head, when you were supposed to talk and when you were supposed to shut up and do what Abed did right then, which was kiss Troy very slowly at first. He wrapped his arms around Abed's torso, though, and when he spread his hands out on Abed's back, his fingers felt warm. Troy pulled away only slightly to speak.

"Abed," he said. "You've got a class."

"So do you."

"I _know_ that." Troy took a deep breath but still didn't draw away. "Plus I've got practice today and I've got to go home after that. My dad's pissed off." He paused and Abed could almost feel him roll his eyes.

Abed mumbled, "Do you want to stop?"

Troy ran his hand over the back of Abed's neck. "I'll come over tonight. We can watch, I dunno, whatever you want. I don't care. But I can spend the night, it'll be no big deal."

"Sure," said Abed, looking perfectly serene as Troy stood up and grabbed his bag.

"I'll see you in study group, okay?" said Troy.

"Sure," said Abed, and he was gone. Some things, Abed reflected as he picked up cereal bowls, were a lot more important than Cheerios and a lot more interesting than _Hogan's Heroes._

~

  
That was Monday. By Tuesday morning, Troy had disappeared. He didn't call Monday evening when he was supposed to come to Abed's. He wasn't there for Spanish class or Statistics. His bike wasn't in the rack, which meant he had obviously gone home, but he had never returned. It was officially, Abed thought, radio silence.

Abed couldn't pay attention in class, even though he sat in the front and the lesson was, even for Chang, an exciting one about stem-changing boot verbs. In elementary Spanish, the "boot" is a mnemonic used to help students remember the category of infinitives that have a spelling change in certain present tense verb forms. Señor Chang, always a literal-minded person, helped the students remember this bit of grammar by bringing in an actual boot and threatening them with it if they got any of the questions wrong on the test. Everyone was reasonably certain he was kidding and was somewhat certain that he wasn't allowed to, say, throw the boot at their heads if they wrote _dormo_ instead of _duermo_, but somehow it was hard to remember that when he got a certain look in his eyes.

What Abed was thinking, even as Chang smacked the sole of the boot on the desktop, was that Troy had nine more school days before Greendale's attendance policies (which were, as Jeff Winger had always called them, positively high schoolian) caught up with him. Abed wasn't so worried about that; he had bigger thoughts on his mind. Abed was certainly no detective, but even he could see the obvious solution when it was right in front of his face.

"I think he's been kidnapped," he said that day in study group.

"Unlikely, Abed," said Jeff. "Maybe he just felt like skipping Chang's class for a few days. God knows we've all felt like that before."

Annie shook her head. "This is really serious, Jeff. If Troy misses too many classes, he might have to," --she learned forward and said in a stage whisper-- "_withdraw!_"

"Also unlikely," said Jeff, but this was not strictly true. Greendale's attendance policy stated that after ten unexcused absences you were considered withdrawn or were obliged to have a nice chat with the Dean and the counselor in the Dean's office, an embarrassment enough to deter most potential truants. "Look, Abed, this isn't 90210."

"It isn't?" asked Abed.

"No, it isn't. It's not like some rival gang had him taken care of. Troy's not even in a gang. The only gang that would take him would be one of those singing and dancing ones that snap."

"_West Side Story_," said Abed, but he didn't look happy. "But Troy's not white. Or Puerto Rican."

"Again, Abed, you've missed my point. Troy hasn't been kidnapped. I'm sure he's fine." Abed was still unconvinced and Annie still looked worried, but Britta and Shirley both rolled their eyes and after that they directed the discussion back to their homework.

~

  
When Shirley went to the library later, Abed and Annie were still there. Before she could ask them to a late lunch with her, she saw that they were working on something together. At first she assumed it was more stem-changing boot verbs, but before she could stop herself she had read the paper quickly upside down and seen this instead, in Abed's spidery handwriting:

_REASONS FOR KIDNAPPING TROY:  
1\. Sexual favors  
2\. Terrorists  
3\. Organ harvesters._

"Troy still has both of his kidneys," said Abed when he noticed her reading it. "As far was we know," he added, ominously.

Shirley looked at the list, then at the two of them, then back at the list. "This is a joke, right?"

They both stared at her.

"We'll see you around, Shirley," said Abed finally as he stood up. Annie followed suit. Shirley thought she maybe looked a little embarrassed, but also determined. Shirley decided to try appealing to her. "Annie, you two are being silly. Troy's not--"

"See you later, Shirley," said Annie rather sharply, following Abed out of the library. Thankfully, they had both left when Shirley broke down into laughter and ran to tell Jeff.

~

  
Troy and his parents lived in a small house not far from Greendale.

"I think we should check it out here first," Abed told her as they pulled up in Annie's mother's Honda Civic. "Just to be sure that Troy isn't being held hostage by his own parents or something."

"That...seems kind of unlikely, Abed," said Annie as they made their way up the walk. "Maybe he's just sick or something. Too sick to call or something."

"In detective stories it's always the most unlikely person who's done it, and it's always for an evil reason, so I figure we should start with them."

Before Annie could reply that real life rarely worked out how detective stories did, and that she wasn't sure if this even qualified as a detective story, Troy's mother, whom Annie recognized from the spaghetti dinner, answered the door. She recognized them as well, to Annie's relief.

"Are you looking for Troy?" Abed nodded. "He's not here."

"He's not sick or something?" asked Annie at the same time Abed asked, "Where is he?"

Mrs. Barnes paused, then shrugged and stood aside. "You'd better come in."

Something in Mrs. Barnes' unsmiling and severe manner had made Annie expect them to be turned away, but Mrs. Barnes was old-fashioned; she sat the two of them down in the kitchen and gave them each a can of Squirt, but her frown grew deeper. Their house was one of those tiny suburban outfits built 35 years ago that had no interior doors except for those to the bedrooms and bathroom. Mrs. Barnes set the cans of soda down in front of them on the table. Before Annie could say anything, Abed had taken his and wandered into the hallway, where he tapped on one of the doors.

"Is this Troy's room?" he called back to them in the kitchen. Annie saw Troy's father, who was in the living room watching Sportscenter, turn to look in Abed's direction. It was the first time he had acknowledged either of them since they had entered, but he only shook his head and turned back to the TV. From what Annie could see, he looked a lot like Troy, except taller.

"Yes," Mrs. Barnes called back. She wasn't exactly friendly, but there was also something pleasantly neutral about her. She seemed to treat Abed's eccentricities with the same placidity that her son did. "You can go in. Clean up a bit, if you like."

"So," said Annie. It occurred to her that if she wasn't comfortable with the part of being a detective that involved barging around other people's houses, then she should probably take over the questioning of the suspects. If they really were playing detective, and if Mrs. Barnes really was a suspect, which was unlikely given how unconcerned she was about Abed kicking around her tiny house.

"Troy and Curt had a fight," said Mrs. Barnes, without prompting.

"Oh. What about?"

She shrugged. "Football again, I suppose. Personally," and here she leaned forward slightly, "I was glad when Troy backed down on the football thing after graduation. I know he's very fond of it, but I never thought it was good for him."

"That's exactly what I said!" Annie felt herself warming to Troy's mother for the first time, not just because this was exactly Annie had said before herself, but because it was the first personal opinion Mrs. Barnes had offered about anything. Annie smiled at her kindly. "So, what happened after their argument?"

"Well, he said he was never coming back," said Mrs. Barnes.

"Oh my gosh. That's awful!" Mrs. Barnes only looked thoughtful and stood up to get herself some coffee. "Didn't--didn't you believe him?"

"You know, they say teenage girls are naturally more dramatic than boys are. I don't have any daughters but" --she paused to take a sip-- "I think that that's definitely not always the case."

Annie smiled a little, suddenly feeling a lot more confident, even though a minute before she had desperately wished that they hadn't blown everyone else off and had asked someone older to come with them. Shirley or Jeff or even Pierce probably would have been offered coffee instead of Squirt, and she supposed would have commanded more respect. Despite this, she went on. "So where _did_ he go?"

"He didn't say. Personally, I think he's got a girlfriend," she said as Abed re-entered the kitchen looking pensive and Annie felt a lot of her confidence disappear again. "Just a suspicion, of course." Abed sat down and stared intently at the tabletop, as if thinking very hard. "There have been nights when he wouldn't come home and wouldn't talk about where he'd been. General things like that. Just a hunch, you know. Anyway, the night he stormed out he couldn't take the car because Curt needs it for work in the mornings, so he had to bike, which I'm sure was a blow to his pride. Plus he forgot his bike light, so I ran after him to make sure he had it. It's dangerous, especially when it's still so dark in the evenings now, you know."

"Did he take it?" Abed asked, suddenly, which surprised Annie because she didn't think he had been listening.

"Oh, yes. Troy's very sensible when he needs to be, despite all appearances to the contrary." Mrs. Barnes turned and scrutinized Abed closely for the first time. She still spoke to Annie, however. "But I forgot, you and Troy were at Riverside together, weren't you, Annie?"

Annie nodded, feeling miserable.

"What was your last name again? I thought that I'd heard of you before. Weren't you one of the salutatorians, something like that?"

"Edison, and no, not quite," said Annie, feeling slightly sick, but just as she did, Abed stood up.

"We should go. We have somewhere else to go before we take the car back to your mom," he said. He tossed her her coat and hassled her out the door before Mrs. Barnes could remember why Annie's name had stuck out so particularly in her memory, which just went to show that Abed had an extremely specialized kind of social tact that he rarely got credit for.

~

  
Abed didn't get in the car immediately; he stood at the end of the Barnes' driveway and looked up and down the street. After a few seconds, he started walking along the side of the road, staring into the dense group of trees across the street from Troy's house. Annie, already in the car, beeped her horn at him. As he ran to get into the shotgun seat, Annie smiled at him.

"You know, I've never had a reason to honk at anyone before. Being a detective is kind of fun." Abed nodded, but continued staring intently along the street and into the woods. "Are you looking for something?"

Abed shook his head. "Probably not. Let's go back to Greendale. I think the football team is practicing tonight before their game; we could talk to them. Have you met the new guy?"

"You mean the one with the silly name I can't remember?" She backed out of the driveway. "No. I think Britta has, maybe. I do know that he's friends with Vaughn or something." Abed was uncharacteristically silent, so Annie didn't volunteer anymore information. She felt embarrassed that she didn't know more about Vaughn's friends, although she didn't really like most of them, which was probably fair because Vaughn certainly didn't like most of hers.

They drove for several more blocks, until they turned onto a street that led towards the school and was surrounded on both sides by still another dense group of trees. Finally, Annie decided not to skirt the subject on her mind for once. "Did _you_ know that Troy had a girlfriend?"

"I don't think he does."

"Are you sure? His mom seemed pretty sure."

Abed cocked his head thoughtfully, then nodded. "I'm pretty sure."

"I don't know why he wouldn't have told everyone in the group." She considered. "OK, so I guess I do know why, but he at least would have told us. Or you."

"Yeah. I probably should--stop the car, Annie." His voice wasn't urgent, but something about it was so sharp that she stepped on the brakes too suddenly. No one was behind her, thankfully. Abed opened his door and leaned over to pick something up off the asphalt.

"Abed, what--" and then she stopped. In his palm lay a busted bike light. "How did you--"

"Just a suspicion," said Abed, staring at the bike light thoughtfully.


	2. Chapter 2

Abed and Annie trudged over the wet lawn to the football field, where they were greeted by a young woman with dark hair sitting on the lowermost bleacher with a baby.

"We're looking for Troy," Annie said immediately. Abed had already wandered off in another direction. "Have you seen him?"

Marisol readjusted the towel covering the baby's head as she shook her head. "He said he wasn't coming in today."

"He told you that?"

"Nope. Texted us."

Annie's brow furrowed. "What, he sent one to the whole team?"

Marisol nodded. "Weird, isn't it? He said he had something important to do. Here, I'll show you." Impressively, she managed to reach down into her purse on the ground and pull out her phone without disturbing the baby at all. The text itself was very short. It had been sent at 10:30 that morning and did not specify what the important thing actually was.

"I assumed it was some kind of family emergency," Marisol went on. "Anyway, George's taken over."

"Who?"

"He's the receiver. He's taking over for me while I'm out because of this guy. Didn't Troy talk about him? George Pluckenpole."

Annie snorted in laughter before she could help it. "Oh, _him_."

Marisol shrugged with one shoulder. "He's pretty good. The best replacement we could find on such short notice, but we, uh, tend not to do so hot if Troy himself isn't here. Look." With her free hand, Marisol pointed to the field where George seemed to be directing the practice. Annie watched for a few seconds. She had an extremely limited understanding of football, but she couldn't see that the Human Beings were that much worse than they had ever been. "I just hope he's back by Friday. Hey, what's wrong with Abed?" asked Marisol. Annie turned around and was not very surprised to see Abed standing at the top of the bleachers, watching the practice.

"We're...just a little worried. Troy wasn't in class or at study group this morning, and his parents don't know where he is either." She looked down at Marisol's phone again. "Also, this text doesn't look like something that Troy would write. It's got, you know. Punctuation and correct spelling."

Marisol was removing the towel from over the baby's head and pulling her shirt back up, but suddenly she looked alarmed. "Maybe he got into a car accident."

"He doesn't have a car. Plus, how did he send the text, then?" Annie shook her head. "It's too weird."

Marisol nodded. "It's not like Troy to be so tight-lipped about stuff like that. About _anything,_ actually."

"Abed thinks he's been kidnapped," said Annie, trying to keep a sensible amount of doubt in her voice.

"_What?_ By who?"

"That's what I've been wondering."

Marisol made a face at the baby and seemed to think. "Maybe it was a little bit of competitive sabotage."

Annie's eyebrows shot up. "You mean some other team...." She thought about something that Jeff had said earlier. _This isn't 90210....It's not like some rival gang has had him taken care of._

It actually was an intriguing idea, if completely absurd. It made sense if you looked at it in a general sense-- one football team _might_ try and take out another team's quarterback just before a big game, either as a joke or to help the first team's chances, because it was the type of dumb jock plan a bunch of dumb jocks would hatch--but it completely fell apart because when you looked at it specifically you had...the Greendale Human Beings, a team unlikely to be targeted by even the most spiteful a competitor, for obvious reasons.

But she only said, politely, "That's...an idea." She thanked Marisol and asked for her cell phone number. "Let us know if you hear from him again."

"You and Abed are really all twisted up about this, aren't you?" Marisol looked at her rather pityingly.

Annie was about to deny this, but then she caught sight of Abed making his way slowly down the bleachers towards them, and then looked back down at Marisol's cell phone. "Just a little, I guess," she said, feeling, not for the first time, a little ridiculous.

~

  
"What did the rest of the team say?" asked Annie as they walked back inside. It was almost sunset, and as they walked they had to squint to keep the sun out of their eyes.

"Nothing."

Annie glared at him, her suspicions proven. "Didn't you _ask_ them anything?"

"Not a lot."

She nearly stomped her foot. "Abed! How do you expect to find anything out if you don't _talk_ to people? You can't just look at people and tell what's wrong with them or what they saw or who they talked to."

"Sherlock Holmes could do that," Abed pointed out. "He could tell people's whole life stories just by looking at them. And then he would use that knowledge to punch them in the face in the most devastating way possible."

"You're not Sherlock Holmes! And Sherlock Holmes did not just go about punching people all...all willy-nilly! Look, are you telling me that we've gone through all this trouble and we didn't find out _anything_?"

Abed was silent for a moment, then went on. "Did you notice the new guy?"

Annie was momentarily distracted from her anger. "Him? Yeah, Marisol was talking about him. His name is Pluckenpole." She giggled because it seemed she was constitutionally unable to say the name without doing so. "Sorry. Anyway, yeah, Marisol said he's all right. He's their best player, she said. Now that Troy's gone, I guess."

Abed was silent and his expression was stern. "Annie, did you ever see _Rudy_?"

"I don't think so."

"What about _Varsity Blues_?"

"No?"

"What about _Remember the Titans_?"

"Yeah, I think so. Why--"

"This is just like the part towards the end, when the star quarterback gets in a car accident and can't play in the game so the plucky underdog has to take his place. Except the roles are reversed and Greendale has obviously already been racially integrated for a long time. Do you see what I mean?"

"No," said Annie, shaking her head. "Not even a little bit."

Abed shrugged. "We should go see if Britta is still inside."

"Abed, why...? Wait up!"

~

  
They found Britta in the library with Jeff, who was tearing up the couch cushions and shouting. "It's a code red," she told Abed and Annie.

"Where the hell could it be?" said Jeff, his hair now less than artfully mussed. "I had it yesterday. I've turned my apartment inside out and it's not there, and I _know_ that I had it yesterday in study group. I'm positive. I use it to shut out all the things that bother me."

"Like what?" asked Abed as Annie asked, "What did you lose?"

Britta was reading and sitting on the table, because Jeff had thrown the chairs all around the room during his search. "His cell phone. He hasn't seen it since yesterday, and I think he's getting separation anxiety."

Jeff rounded on Britta. "You shut it unless you're going to help."

"Got it." When his back was turned, she mouthed _he's mental_ at them.

"Britta," began Annie, rather primly, "we're still looking for Troy. Now, Abed is going sit down here," -- she gave him a significant look, which he returned blankly before sitting down next to Britta -- "and _ask you a few questions_ while I go help Jeff find his phone."

"Why don't you stay here and ask Britta questions?"

"Because I am very good at finding lost things," said Annie brightly. "I have a natural talent. I can draw up timetables, if necessary. Just find out whatever it is you want to know about George Pluckenpole." She giggled. "Gosh, I'm sorry. It's that name."

"It is pretty comical," said Abed. Once she had walked away to the other end of the library, where Jeff was having an argument with a receptionist, he turned to Britta. "So, Britta."

"So, Abed."

"Please tell me everything you know about George Pluckenpole."

Britta threw back her head. "God, why is it still so funny?"

Abed looked stern. "Britta, I'm going to have to ask you to confine yourself to the facts, please."

She only giggled again. "Shirley said that you and Annie were playing detective. I almost didn't believe her."

"Nobody's playing anything. Troy's been kidnapped."

Little of the laughter went out of her face, but she sounded more concerned. "That's totally absurd, Abed. What could _possibly_ make you think that?"

The corner of his lips twitched. "Inquiries are proceeding."

"Oh, for--"

"George Pluckenpole. What do you know about him?"

She shrugged. "Well, what do you want to know? He's friends with Vaughn, I met him when we were dating. Why don't you ask Annie?"

Abed ignored that. "How well did you know him?"

"Barely at all. I mean, I dated Vaughn for, like, what, a week?"

"Actually, it was less than that, if you count that we, as a group, didn't find out until Friday and by the following Wednesday you had--"

"Thanks, Abed. I don't know. I guess I'm pretty sure George was Vaughn's dealer before he went straight. George went straight, I mean, not Vaughn, obviously. And I think--Abed, are you writing down what I'm saying?"

Abed looked up from the notepad he had just produced from his pocket. "This is very interesting. Please go on."

Britta eyed him suspiciously. "Are you making fun of me?"

"No. Please go on. You suspected he might have once dealt drugs. Why?"

She shrugged. "Just an impression I got from the way he talked to Vaughn." She paused. "Well, and also because I talked to him about hooking me up once. But that didn't work out, and anyway, I don't think he deals anymore. He sort of made it sound like he had a stash up at his family's cabin or something, but Vaughn's the only person I know around here who sells anything worth--" She stopped when it seemed to occur to her that Abed didn't need to know about her procurement problems following her breakup with Vaughn. "Anyway. George always struck me as that annoying straight-edge dude who still hangs out with the hippies for no reason except so he can feel holier-than-thou."

"Maybe you're just projecting," Abed pointed out.

She glared at him. "You _asked_ me what I thought of him, Abed. And look, just because he's a person that I didn't particularly like doesn't mean that he's...." She paused. "What is it you suspect him of having done, anyway? And don't say kidnapping, because that's--"

"Inquiries are proceeding," he repeated, closing his notebook with a snap. "Thank you for your help."

"You know, it's like you think you're Jerry Orbach all of a sudden, or something," said Britta, shaking her head. "It's completely gone to your head. See you around, Abed." She turned back to her homework.

~

  
In fact, at about that moment, Troy was awakening with a throbbing headache reminiscent of a bad hangover. Which was odd, because he had no recollection of going to sleep at all, much less drinking. More pressing, however, was the fact that his eyes were open, but all he could see was black.

"Oh my god, I've gone bl--oh." A second later he realized that he was wearing a blindfold. "What the hell?" he said, out loud, just because he could. A second after that, he realized that someone had tied his hands behind his back. "That's not funny, guys," he shouted, not exactly sure who he was talking to. He kicked his legs out and encountered two objects: one was hard, and upon further examination with the sole of his sneaker he thought it might be his bike; and the other was soft and made a small bleating noise when he kicked it. He shot up so quickly his head collided with the ceiling, and it was then that he realized that he was in a van or truck of some sort. In his panic to get away from the source of the noise, he knocked something over and heard a loud crashing noise to his left. "You're kidding me. You've got to be fucking kidding me." Troy had grown up in the suburbs, and his parents had only rarely been what you would call outdoorsy types, but he was pretty sure that he was blindfolded and locked in the back of a van with a sheep.

Troy sank back down and leaned back against the side of the car or van or whatever it was. There was a noise like a panel or a window sliding back, and a man's voice shushed him.

"Man, fuck you," said Troy, then paused. "Who _are _you? Why is there a sheep here? I swear to God, I will kick your _ass_ if that sheep bites me."

"It's not a--look, he's not going to bite you. You really need to be quiet."

"I don't like sheep!"

"Quit kicking him!"

Troy did, but only because it suddenly occurred to him that he might be missing the larger problem here. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"He just needed a ride to the stable," said the voice, trying to sound soothing, of all things. "We're almost there. Would you calm down?"

"_Calm down_? Do you have any idea what you just _said_? Did you just kidnap me?"

"Just...look, be quiet. Or I'll kick you in the head. Uh, again."

Troy was startled. "You kicked me in the head?"

"Uh, yeah. So be quiet." He said he had kicked Troy in the head, and Troy had to believe him because one side of his head was throbbing like he'd never felt it throb even after prom night, but the voice's tone was not one that inspired much fear. It didn't say "please," but it sounded like it would have liked to. Suddenly, there was a fainter noise of someone else talking. Troy only heard the panel slide shut again. He considered shouting and thrashing around a bit just to piss them off, but then he remembered the sheep and decided against it. Not because he was afraid of a sheep, he told himself, but because everyone who had ever seen any sort of action movie knew that now was the time when you conserved your energy in order to fight at a later time. With this in mind, he maneuvered himself so he could sit upright more comfortably, and then carefully pushed himself away from where he knew the sheep to be.

"Jesus Christ," he said, leaning his head against the van's side. He heard the sheep bleat again, as if in agreement.

~

  
"Well," said Jeff. "You look like you were having a good time."

Annie winced. The receptionist had directed them to the lost-and-found box, which they were digging through without any real hope. It only took until they reached the pile of unclaimed jock straps that Annie gave in and recounted to Jeff what she was only very reluctantly calling the investigation.

"Wow," said Jeff. "I can't believe you actually used the words 'willy-nilly' in a real conversation. What are you, a kindergarten teacher?"

"It might be funny to _you_, Jeff Winger, but--" She bit her lip. "Look, I know he doesn't show it that much, but Abed is really worried, and so am I. _Nobody's_ seen Troy since last night, not any of us, not the football team, not even his parents."

Jeff sighed and carefully set down the pile of jock straps. "Annie, let me tell you this. As a man who was also 18, handsome, and academically uninspired once: drop it. Troy probably got invited to a kegger in Boulder and is getting wasted out of his mind as we speak. What is it, Tuesday? He'll recover from his hangover sometime on Wednesday and come back here by Friday to scrape out a respectable loss for the football team, and nobody'll be the wiser."

"But--"

"And now I suggest," Jeff went on, "that instead of using these supposed powers of detection to track down your wayward former crushes, you put them to better use answering a much more pressing and important question, namely, _where the hell is my goddamn phone?_"

Annie sighed. "Oh, all right. I'll help you, but only for a little bit."

"Because it's not in this mess." He kicked the box as he stood up. "It's all willy-nilly, wouldn't you say?"

"I'm not going to help you if you make fun of me," she said, but her mouth was twitching a little.

"A big higgledy-piggledy mess if I ever saw one. What's that for?" Annie had gotten a piece of paper and pen out of her bag.

"We're going to make a timetable, Jeff. When you lose something, usually the best idea is to make a definitive chronological list of times and places you _did_ have it. Does that make sense?"

"It seems needlessly complicated to me."

"Do you want to find it or not?"

"Assuming someone hasn't stolen it already." Jeff sighed. "You know, Britta said earlier that she thinks I've traded in meaningful relationships with other people for my cell phone." Annie raised her eyebrows at him. "I won't deny it, but I will say that it's really hard to find a cell phone that combines functionality and user-friendliness with such a pleasingly sleek color scheme." He sighed again. "The last place I _definitively_ saw my phone was in the student center last night at 6 o'clock...."

~

  
The van stopped. Troy stayed frozen where he was until he heard the door shut after the slow clip-clop sound of the sheep's hooves.

_Fucking sheep_, he thought. After that, he was able to drift off to a slightly more restful sleep. Abed had shown him a movie from New Zealand that was all about sheep going mad and rising up to kill their owners. It had terrified him, and only supplemented his perfectly rational existing fear of petting zoos.

When he woke again, they were still moving, and Troy briefly panicked as he wondered how long he had been asleep. His head still throbbed, but he had begun to doubt the claim that he had been kicked in the head. In fact, he suspected that he had knocked it against the road, as he now had a vague memory of being surprised by headlights out of nowhere and then falling off his bike. At any rate, he decided that this was the part of the action movie where the hero had recuperated enough to kick some ass. All he had to do, he reflected, was get his hands free and kick some dudes in the face. Simple.

Troy was not a naturally inquisitive person, so his mind was preoccupied less with why he was tied up in the back of a car, or how he was going to escape from the car, and more with the last action movie he had seen in a movie theater, which had been with Abed, of course. They'd gone to see _Sherlock Holmes_ together on Christmas Day. It had been a blast because nobody else had been there, so they had thrown popcorn and shouted at the screen. The movie itself had been surprisingly exciting, given Troy's admittedly limited knowledge of the franchise. He had never known, he had told Abed, that Sherlock Holmes was so into kicking dudes in the face.

He was lost in thought when the van finally stopped. Troy froze and listened to the muffled voices of the two men. He heard one's footsteps coming around the side of the van, and then the door opened.

"Uh, you can come out." It was the man who had supposedly kicked him in the head.

Troy had seen enough action movies to know what you did here. Exaggeratedly slowly, he made his way towards the head kicker's voice. "I'm going to be sick," he said.

"No, you won't," said the supposed head kicker uncertainly. "Here, let me help you up."

"I'm going to puke," said Troy as the head kicker grabbed his upper arm and gently helped him stand up, "if you don't take off this blindfold." After a second's thought, he tottered a little on his feet. The head kicker grabbed his other arm and attempted to steady him. "I'm serious. It's like I've been kicked in the head forty times." He honestly did feel a little dizzy, so when he tried faking it he almost threw himself off balance for real.

"You won't puke." The voice hesitated. "Look, I didn't kick you in the head on purpose, exactly. I mean, you surprised us. We weren't expecting you to leave your house. Where were you going, anyway?"

"Why don't you mind your own fucking business?" Troy snapped.

"Right...but we saw you and we turned on the headlights--"

"And I fell off my bike," Troy finished for him, temporarily forgetting his anger as he remembered.

"Yeah. And I might have kicked you. Accidentally. You don't have a concussion, though."

That piqued his anger again. "I'm gonna hurl right in your goddamn face if you don't take off this blindfold. I swear, I'll die just to spite you and you'll get sent to prison for killing me--"

"Oh, all right. I'm taking it off." As he did so, Troy blinked and then nearly did fall down for real in the sudden light. He looked around and was dismayed to discover that he had no idea where he was, and that it was almost evening time again. "What day is it? Where are we?"

"Look, why don't you sit down--" It was then that Troy finally thought to spare a glance for his captor, who was a very short, pasty white guy, probably in his early thirties, with a scraggly red-brown goatee that reminded Troy of a toilet brush. The other man, the one who must have been driving the van, was just in Troy's periphery. He was standing near the front of the small cabin, talking on the phone. From what Troy could make out, he was another white guy, but unlike the other one, he was kind of distressingly huge.

"I have to pee," said Troy, seized with sudden inspiration.

"Uh, yeah, about that--"

"What are you going to do?" asked Troy. "You not gonna let me go? That's disgusting, man."

The man looked embarrassed and angry. He looked towards his accomplice, but the other man was engrossed in his phone call. He was yelling at someone about a key and a cell phone. "All right, fine."

"Cool. Untie me."

The man wasn't that trusting, anyway. He grabbed Troy's arm and led him around behind the cabin where there was a wooden outhouse.

"Oh, gross," said Troy, not faking anything this time.

"You've never been camping before?"

"_Hell_ no." This was not strictly true; there had been a few trips with his parents when he was a kid and bonfires and shit like that during senior year parties, but he had successfully repressed most of these times.

The man shrugged and opened the outhouse door. He untied Troy's hands, but before he could push him inside the outhouse, Troy had turned around and punched him in the face. The man stumbled and Troy kicked him in the stomach, which knocked the breath out of him and successfully kept him from making any noise but a surprised _oof!_

Troy was ecstatic. He had been in fights before, but nothing about those had ever been as exciting as this. He wondered what would be an appropriate thing say. "Next time," he said breathlessly, tightening his fists, "I'll kick you in your _face._"

It was then that Troy made one of the poorly-considered life decisions for which he had been so famous back at Riverside High School. He looked around, his excitement slowly being replaced by more and more terror by the minute, and saw the house, another building that could have been a shed or a garage, and a whole lot of fucking trees. The van was on the other side of the house, along with the other man whose frame, from what Troy had been able to see of it, was considerably larger than Troy's own. Just then, the first man found his voice.

"Bill!" he called out. "Bill, come get him!"

Troy didn't even think. He ran as if someone were already chasing him.

~

  
After leaving Britta, Abed found Annie and Jeff just outside the library, arguing over a piece of paper.

"It's ridiculous, Annie."

"It's on the timetable! Look, it's the last place you remember having it. We plotted it out _meticulously_."

"I'm just going to cancel the service, Annie. This is ridiculous. Someone's probably stolen it and is using--hey, Abed. Trail gone cold?"

Abed shook his head. "Where're you going?"

"The student union," said Annie.

"It's either there, or it's been stolen," said Jeff. "I'll leave you to guess what the more likely option is."

"You never know," said Annie, who, Abed knew, possessed great faith not only in the accuracy of her timetables, but also in the goodness of her fellow human beings. "It's there if it's anywhere."

The student union was mostly deserted this late in the evening. Annie helped Jeff search over by the couches and beneath the armchairs, but Abed stopped when he saw George Pluckenpole over in a corner by the soda machines on his cell phone. Abed made his way over to him, and took a long time fishing the change from his pockets and then considering what he wanted.

"--stolen. Throw it away. I don't want it back, that's for sure. What? I told you, the front door key's under--well, _I_ don't know. Which rock looks the fakest? No. No, it's a good two hours up there and I don't have--I've got my hands full," said George, as Abed looked intently at the coins in his hand and appeared to give great consideration over whether he wanted to give up the Ohio or the Minnesota state quarters. George went on. "Yeah, sure, but that doesn't mean the rest of the team should get cocky just because they're even more horrible than normal--." George suddenly stopped. While he didn't say anything, Abed knew that George was looking at him. "Hey, Abed, buddy, did you need something?"

Abed held up the two quarters for George's inspection. He had thought that what he had been doing would be immediately obvious to an observer. "The Minnesota one's got a boat and some trees, but on Ohio's there's an astronaut."

George look nonplussed for a second, then understood. "Get rid of the boat, for sure." Abed nodded. It was hard to believe someone so obviously nefarious was such a good judge of state quarters. George gave him a friendly smile, but did not resume his conversation until Abed had inserted all his coins, painstakingly selected a Sprite, and started walking away. "Anyway, it's only until Friday..."

Annie, meanwhile, was consoling Jeff on one of the couches. "I'm sorry. I really thought the timetables would work."

"Someone probably stole it, Annie, don't beat yourself up. I'll cancel the service when I get home tonight."

"Annie," said Abed, "are you sure this is the last place Jeff had his phone?"

She nodded. "I'm positive."

"OK, we are not _positive_\--"

"Jeff," said Abed, "what was going on in here when you came in here last night?"

Jeff ruffled his hair a bit and thought. "Well, I've been at Greendale long enough that I can tune most of these things out, but I'm pretty sure the hippies were drum circling. Why?"

"Look around the room and tell me if anyone here now was here last night when the hippies were drum circling."

"Well, there must be a bunch of them--"

"There's not many people here. You probably can pick a few people out."

"I doubt it," said Jeff, but he stood up and surveyed the room slowly. "Well, Annie was here, obviously. And so was that guy. Him. And I think that woman with the baby was, too." Jeff turned finally to the corner where George was still talking on his cell phone. "That guy. I think that's it."

Abed nodded. "All right, then. Jeff, I wouldn't cancel your phone subscription just yet."

"Really?"

"I think I know who stole it."

"Who?"

"It's only a suspicion." Abed considered for a second, then turned to Annie. "Can you borrow your mom's car again tomorrow?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so. Sorry, Abed."

"It's all right." Abed turned to Jeff. "Then, no, we can't tell you where your phone is."

"_What_? Abed, I swear--"

"It's for leverage. In case we need your car," explained Abed. "We've a got a little more investigating to do before you leave, Annie. Do you mind?"

"Oh, no," said Annie, faintly. "I don't have to return the car until nine." As she stood up to follow Abed to the dorm, she turned around and gave Jeff a slightly apologetic look. "See you tomorrow, Jeff. Don't forget the Spanish homework!"

They left Jeff very annoyed. Usually when something Annie or Abed did made him so peevish, he would send Britta a sarcastic text message, but of course he couldn't right then. He drove home grumbling, and was still more annoyed when he realized that he had his Spanish homework to finish or else risk getting the boot from Señor Chang.

~

  
Troy didn't have to run for long before he realized that he was fucked, of course, but he didn't stop because he imagined that he was still being chased. Not just by the mysterious men, but by everything he had ever imagined living in a forest. Lions and tiger and bears...his mind even went back to that stupid sheep that had been in the van with him. He shuddered and kept running, even though he knew it was pretty hopeless. He didn't know which way led back to the cabin, and he had kept away from the road so they wouldn't see him. His cell phone was gone, and at first he had been enraged when he thought they had taken his watch as well, before he realized that he had forgotten to grab it during the rage he had been in when he had left his parents' house to go to Abed's dorm room. Perhaps most importantly of all, he didn't have his jacket and was probably going to freeze to death.

He rubbed his arms and kept moving. Adrenaline was keeping him going, but he could tell it was going to fail him. Just then, however, as night was falling, he found the cabin.

At first he panicked and assumed he had unwittingly run in a circle and right back to the people he had escaped from, but this was a building that could not be called a house or even a shed. The first cabin that Troy had been taken to, while rustic and apparently without niceties like indoor plumbing, had probably been inhabitable, at the very least. This place looked like it had been abandoned and forgotten for a decade. The only word to describe it was "shack." One that was lucky to still have a roof.

Troy stared at it, panting. His face was very hot, but the rest of his body was rapidly cooling the longer he stood there, which was how he reached the conclusion that no matter what kinds of rats and bugs and other animals were undoubtedly nesting inside the shack, they couldn't compare to the imminent frosty death laying in wait for him outside. Nothing skittered out of the way _too_ obviously when he pushed the door open, anyway, and if he heard any pitter-patter of tiny feet from the corners, he managed to ignore it sufficiently to keep himself from freaking out more than he was already.

The shack contained nothing but a small fire grate and a bed with, miraculously, a dirty, moth-eaten quilt. He picked it up, shook it out, and wrapped it around himself. He tried to fall asleep without thinking too much, because none of his thoughts were very helpful or encouraging: he was hungry, cold, and thirsty; his head still hurt; and the last thing he had told his parents was that he was never coming home again, which meant that they probably wouldn't come looking for him for several days. He supposed that people at Greendale would wonder where he had gone, but he knew none of them were going to assume that he had been abducted by sheep-loving white supremacists. (Troy had decided that, in the absence of any other evidence, he had been kidnapped by a fringe KKK group.) Not even Abed's imagination, he thought as he drifted to sleep, was that unlikely.


	3. Chapter 3

Troy had a dream that a rat was sitting in front of his face when he woke up, so when he actually did awake to an empty room and the sunlight streaming in right on his face, he was pleasantly surprised. He was still cold and hungry and had no way (or _clue how_, even) to make a fire, but he decided to get up and try to find the road again. Of course, it was probably just as likely that he would freeze to death, but he preferred the idea of freezing to death out _there_ to staying here until the two men came and found him again. Drawing the quilt tightly around himself, he went outside and found the narrow, brambly path. After walking for about twenty minutes, the path joined with a wider one, which Troy considered an encouraging sign.

It was several hours later, when the sun was quite high in the sky, that Troy saw the signposts, two big metal ones. One was a notice from the Colorado State Parks Department that reminded hikers that ATVs, snowmobiles, and litter were not permitted on the trials. Troy was disappointed that it did not include a map or maybe even some note of where the hell he was, but he refused to be devastated until he had walked several yards further on and read the second one, which was a stark, brown "NO HUNTING" sign with several bullet holes shot through it.

After that Troy walked somewhat faster.

~

  
Despite the imminent threat of their Friday quiz and Señor Chang's boot, at Spanish study group that morning no one's mind was on their homework, but rather on Abed and Annie, both of whom hadn't slept much the night before but were very excited nonetheless. Annie, in particular, was practically glowing with her own importance, even though she had completely forgotten about getting the car back to her mother the night before and had been ignoring her cell phone for the past 12 hours. She didn't even seem to mind that Chang had dropped the boot right next to her ear when she dozed off earlier during class. She and Abed announced that they had discovered a solution to the Troy problem. Abed passed out a stapled packet of paper that Annie had had printed out early that morning in the campus's Duplicating room, and asked everyone to hold all questions until the end.

"Abed, what--" began Britta before Abed shushed her sharply.

"It's, um. It's very professional-looking," said Shirley.

"Thank you," said Annie, smiling and looking radiant despite the shadows beneath her eyes. "I never thought being a detective would be so fun! It's like being Sherlock Holmes or Lord Peter Wimsey--"

"Or Scooby Doo," said Abed.

"Exactly!" Annie beamed, but then her gaze landed on Jeff's empty chair. He hadn't been in Spanish class. "Do you think we should we wait for Jeff, or--"

"No-o-o," said Shirley, paging through the packet in disbelief. "No, I think you'd better start right away. Unless you have another packet of information explaining where Jeff is, too."

Annie shook her head. "No. Just for Troy." Her eyes widened and she said worriedly, "You don't think Jeff is--"

"I wouldn't worry about it," said Britta. "One at a time. Why don't you start with your, um, presentation?"

Annie took a deep breath and stood up. "All right. If you'll turn to page three, we'll start."

The article on page three was from City College's school newspaper, dated from a year ago, and was about the City College Goats' new football lineup. Annie began evenly. "As you can see, George Pluckenpole--all right, look, you can laugh at it now, but please refrain from laughing during the rest of the presentation."

"You'll make her nervous," said Abed, who also looked rather edgy.

"Thanks, Abed. As I was saying, George Pluckenpole was recruited by Troy last week, and he was not altogether honest about where he had played football before coming to Greendale. We have conjectures about _why_ he left City College, which we'll go into later. At any rate, as you can see on page six, he retained ties to City College's football program." Pages sixes through ten were printouts of Facebook wall postings between George and several names from the coaching staff on page three.

"Now, according to a, um, witness, around campus" --Annie eyed Britta rather significantly-- "George used to sell marijuana at some earlier date. It's not exactly _certain_, of course, but I'm reasonably sure that that was perhaps the reason that he was expelled from City College. When he transferred to Greendale, he had probably learned his lesson and either didn't deal or kept his dealing off-campus." Annie looked stern and disapproving at this point. Britta rolled her eyes. "In fact, interviews with this same witness indicate that he may have been using his family's cabin up in the mountains as a secluded spot to grow marijuana plants, or _Cannibis sativa_. If you'll look on page eleven, you'll see an illustration as well as--"

"I think we all know what weed looks like, Annie."

"Right. Sorry. Well, if you'll turn to the next page, then--that's page twelve, Pierce. The one after," she told him. He had still been studying the factual information Annie had printed about _Cannibis sativa._ "If you'll turn to _that_ page, you'll see that the Pluckenpoles do, in fact, hold a very secluded property at the address indicated. It's a matter of public record," she added, smugly. Pages twelve and thirteen were composed of a printout of Mapquest directions from the Greendale campus parking lot to an address in a township up in the mountains, about two hours away.

"That's convenient," said Britta, who couldn't think of anything else to say.

"That's where Troy is right now," said Annie.

"But why--"

"No questions until the end, please."

"Thank you, Abed. On page fourteen, you'll see another report that I found from City College's newspaper." This one was about the uncommonly hard luck that the City College football team had fallen on during that season. Annie took them through all the articles, which detailed almost every kind of catastrophe that could befall a modest football program. There had been star players quitting or transferring to other schools, injuries, illnesses, firings, and, possibly the strangest of all, an unspecified scandal among several senior players involving a goat, a goose, and a folding chair.

"I think you'll agree," Annie went on, "that City College's football program was putting up a front. They were crumbling" --she pounded one of her palms with her fist-- "from the inside. Desperate as they were, they might have resorted to what one of our witnesses called 'competitive sabotage.' Something like, say, kidnapping the Human Beings's quarterback, which would leave the Greendale team in disarray. Or, well." Her professional facade faltered. "More disarray than usual, anyway. Enough disarray that even a diminished team like City College could beat them. All they needed to do was lure Troy out of his house in the evening with the phone they had stolen from Jeff, and they could take him away to the mountains until the game was over and done and their team had won," said Annie, finishing her speech with relish. Abed started clapping and everyone else, rather numbly, followed suit.

When Jeff walked in, the four of them were clapping heartily, and Annie still looked proud of herself. "Did I miss anyth.... What are you guys doing? You're not studying." Britta tapped the packet that Annie had set in front of his chair. "What the hell is this? Are there stem-changing boot verbs in it? Why am I reading it?" he asked as he sat down and paged through it.

"You missed Annie's presentation, Jeff," said Abed.

"And it was _good_," said Pierce. "Where the hell were you?"

Jeff, who had also been caught in the packet's description of _Cannabis sativa_, looked up. "I overslept. I usually use my phone as an alarm, and my clock radio's buzzer didn't work."

"That's the problem with your type, Jeff," said Pierce. "You lose your phone and your whole life falls apart. You can't wake up at the right time, you can't call people to tell them why you didn't wake up at the right time, you've got no place to conveniently play Tetris--"

"Look, just...shut up," said Jeff. He turned to Abed. "Do you really know where my phone is?"

Abed exchanged a look with Annie. "Most likely."

"Because if you do know where my phone is and you don't tell me, I will be forced to disown you."

Everybody ooh'ed, but Abed was unfazed. "I know where your phone is, Jeff. Plus, you can't disown me, we're not related."

"That won't stop me. Where is it?"

"Page twelve."

Jeff groaned. "This is a joke, right? You guys are all staging some elaborate hoax." Glaring at all of them, he turned to page twelve and read the instructions to the cabin in the mountains. He sighed. "I suppose you want me to drive, then."

"That would probably be easier," Abed admitted. "Lexuses are really roomy."

~

"I don't understand what you people have done to me," Jeff said five hours later to no one in particular, which was interesting since everyone was piled in his car. Everyone had been convinced to come with, Shirley and Britta because of their rather dazed fascination with the whole thing and Pierce because of his continuing curiosity in the _Cannibis sativa_ plant.

"Take a right up here," said Abed, who was sharing the shotgun seat with Annie and was reading out from printed-out Mapquest instructions.

"You got it. What am I doing? It's a Wednesday night. I have five people in my car, and there's not much of a chance that I'll find my phone, is there, Abed?"

Abed looked up and stared at Jeff. "Of course there's a chance."

"Ha. Right. You just wanted my car."

"Of everyone in the group, they decided that they'd rather see you shell out for gas money," said Britta from the backseat.

"Actually, I chose Jeff's car because of the comfortable leather interiors," said Abed. "And also because I think you have to learn an important lesson about how friends are more valuable than your cell phone, Jeff."

"Wow, that's a cool story, Abed. I'm sure I've already internalized whatever the message was supposed to be. Now, I'm going to predict something for you here. In about...20 minutes, we'll get to this guy's cabin--"

"In about 10 minutes, actually," said Abed. "And his name is Pluckenpole."

"Right and--_why are you all laughing_?"

"Jeff, just try to say Pluckenpole without laughing," said Shirley. "Go on, just try it."

"Plucken--okay, wow, you're right, I didn't even make it to the end of the word. Anyway, we're going to get to this cabin and nobody'll be there and I'll be able to say I told you so."

"We'll see," said Abed. "Take another right."

~

  
Troy thought he was going the wrong way. He had been walking all day and still hadn't gotten anywhere he wanted to be. He thought that he was heading in the direction away from the cabin, but with every step his sneaker dug more into the blister on the back of his heel and he became more unsure of himself. It was possible that during one of the nebulous childhood camping trips either his father or mother had taught him what to do in the event he found himself wandering in the mountains, but he was fucked if he could remember what they had said now. The sun was going down again, and his anxiety about freezing to death was increasing. He supposed there was nothing for it but to keep going forward; it was too late to turn back now.

That was when Troy heard the noise of a motor running. He froze and wondered if he had been walking parallel to the road the whole time and not realized it, but then figured that that was not possible; the trees weren't dense enough here to block a view of the road, but the sound had been close by. It was back in the direction he had come from, and from a smaller engine. Possibly it was an ATV or a snowmobile, which were technically illegal in this part of the trail, but right now the Colorado State Parks Department could go fuck themselves for all Troy cared. He ran, whooping with joy, towards the sound. It wasn't until he had got around a bend in the trees that he saw the bright red snowmobile, and not until he got a few steps closer that Troy recognized the driver.

It was the huge guy from back at the cabin, the one who had been on the phone when Troy had made his escape.

~

  
Jeff nearly drove past the cabin's long gravel driveway. Abed stopped him just in time and told them that the place was at the end of this road.

"Should we really just...drive up like this?" asked Shirley. The road was very narrow and the trees seemed to press up against the sides of the car, giving it a claustrophobic feel, and evening was falling.

"Yeah, isn't it legal to shoot people who trespass on your property up here in the boonies?" asked Britta.

"I don't think so."

"Well, that's good," said Pierce. "At least when they shoot us we'll know it was illegal."

"Look, kids," Jeff said, turning around. "Quit it back there. Don't make me turn this car around."

Everyone was silent, for once. The driveway wound around for what seemed like a mile, but finally the clearing drew into sight. There were two very small buildings: a one-story cabin and a separate building for the garage. There were no cars around. Jeff stopped the car and everyone got out, stretching their legs and looking around apprehensively.

"Where are they, Abed?" whispered Annie, but Abed was looking around and not paying attention. He followed Annie over to the garage. They looked through the grimy windows, but there was nothing and, more importantly, nobody inside.

"Oh, Abed, we were wrong," said Annie, looking crestfallen.

He shook his head. "What about the cabin?"

Jeff was at the front door, knocking furiously and receiving no response. "Is there anything over there, Annie?" he called to her, and she told him no, even though it was difficult to shout. She felt like she was about to cry.

"Oh my god!" shouted Britta from somewhere behind the house. Abed's eyes widened, and Annie could barely keep up with him as he darted towards her voice. Unfortunately, in the backyard there was nothing but Britta, an outhouse, and--

"Ho. Lee. _Shit_," said Britta, nearly cackling. "What a stash! So much for giving up dealing, huh, Annie? Maybe it was his personal supply or something."

"Oh," said Annie, her heart sinking, and she saw Abed stop dead beside her as he caught sight of all the weed, which was contained inside a strange little greenhouse structure to keep out the cold. "We thought--"

"Never mind," said Jeff. He looked angry. "There's no one here, and there's no one inside. That cabin's not hiding anything and I refuse to break in--"

"Hold on," said Abed. He ran back to the front door of the cabin. It was a rustic building but oddly ornate in specific ways; there was a large bay window with a seat looking out over the yard and a nice-looking door knocker that had _Pluckenpole_ embossed upon it rather ridiculously. The yard itself wasn't landscaped, but there was a single bush planted underneath the bay window, surrounded by a semicircle of rocks. Abed got down on his knees and started digging them up.

"Abed," said Jeff irritably, "what are you--oh." Abed had unearthed a grimy copy of a house key.

"They must have put it back," said Abed, thoughtfully, as he unlocked the door.

"How did he know that was there?" Jeff mumbled to himself, then turned to Shirley, who had come from behind the house. "How did he know that was there?"

"Magic eight-ball," said Shirley in a sing-song voice as she followed Abed into the cabin. "Aren't you coming in to look?"

"No. This whole thing is stupid. I don't know why I let you think you had talked me into it. I don't know why I let all of you ride in my car; that's definitely against the house rules."

"What house rules?"

"No free rides."

"Oh, Jeff--"

"Anyway, going in there is illegal," said Jeff.

Shirley turned around and stood in the door's entryway. "It's not breaking and entering. We didn't break anything to get in; we found the key."

"That doesn't--look, obviously you are not a lawyer."

"Neither are you," she pointed out, in that deceptive, sweet voice she used sometimes just to infuriate him. "Anymore."

"Oh, laugh it up," he muttered, but he couldn't resist following her into the house.

There were two rooms: a bedroom which had a bare mattress and nothing else, and a small living area with a little woodstove and couch. Troy wasn't anywhere to be found, and neither was Jeff's phone. In fact, the whole place seemed disconcertingly bare, as if it had been torn apart and stripped of all identifying objects even before they searched it.

Annie still looked like she wanted to cry. She turned to Abed, but his face was so blank that she couldn't even speak to him. Shirley came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm a horrible detective," she told her miserably.

"Oh, honey, no you're not. You both worked really hard, we could tell--"

"I'm no Peter Wimsey," said Annie suddenly, starting to cry. "I'm not even a Josie _or_ a Pussycat."

"Now I'm sure that's not true," said Shirley, putting her arm around Annie.

Jeff, meanwhile, looked murderous. He wouldn't look at Abed or Annie as he said, "Come on. We're going."

"Oh, come on," said Britta, crawling out from under the moldy sofa.

"No! You know what, I think I've been a remarkably good sport about Annie and Abed's stupid little detective game. I listened to all the bullshit and and I let you guys use my car and you know what? I think I'm done. We've wasted a whole afternoon, we haven't found Troy _or_ my phone and I've still missed Spanish and haven't done my homework and now Chang's going to throw the boot at my head, so I am done. Everybody better get into the car _right now_ or they can walk home. Does anyone have a problem with that?"

Britta looked like she did, but when she turned to Abed for support all she saw was the same sullen, uncommunicative expression. Shirley looked stricken and serious even as she continued to comfort Annie, who was shaking and teary, and Pierce was outside still, inspecting the marijuana. Britta sighed and followed everyone else back out to the car without argument, drawing Abed aside as she did so. "We'll call Troy's parents when we get home," she told him. "If they still don't know where he is, we can call the cops, or they can. That's what we should have done in the first place. I'm sorry, Abed. I'm sure he's fine. Abed?"

Abed didn't say anything, or give any indication that he had heard her. Britta sighed again and climbed in the backseat. Shirley followed her.

"I hate road trips," Shirley said, closing the door. "There's always a fight. Or a shouting match. Or someone throwing a boot at someone's head."

"I'm glad that wasn't just my family," said Britta, but she didn't feel like speaking anymore and neither, thankfully, did Shirley.

Pierce had detached himself from the weed by this time and noticed everyone getting into the Lexus. He took in Shirley, Britta and Jeff's equally stony faces, Annie's tears, and Abed's complete blankness and got in the backseat. "Something wrong?" he asked as Jeff backed up the car and prepared to go back down the gravel driveway. Nobody, of course, answered him.

~

  
After awhile the exertion got pretty mindless. Troy was really tired, but he felt like he could run all day. It reminded him of the time he had gotten into an argument with one of the coaches during training and the coach had made him run laps for hours to prove a point Troy could no longer remember.

He wasn't thinking about the snow in his shoes, the quilt from the shack that he had shrugged off his shoulders as soon as he had started running (which was all right, in a way; he had been trying to ignore it, but he was pretty sure it had had bugs in it), or how he was stumbling over tree roots and branches. He went through the brambles, bushes, and even through a thicket of sharp pine trees in which he became entangled for what seemed like a whole minute. When he finally reached a small stream, he was nearly mad with panic. His common sense (such as it was) told him that, quarterback or no, there was no way he could outrun a snowmobile forever, and it was inevitable that the huge dude would track him down. Troy saw with a wince that he had been leaving very clear footprints in the flat, unblemished snow of the creek bank. He definitely wasn't going to test how thick the ice was on the creek; you didn't have to be an Eagle Scout to know that was a bad idea. On the other hand, he reasoned as the revving of the snowmobile's engine grew louder, the creek was probably less than six feet across at its narrowest point, and there weren't that many other options....

He nearly didn't make it; he landed on his knees on the opposite bank and had to pull himself up by clawing for the dead reeds and cattails. Turning around, he saw the bright red of the snowmobile emerging from the trees.

"Ha!" he shouted in victory, his voice cracking because he had barely used it all day. "Motherfucker!" He turned and ran into the woods after this comparatively minimal amount of gloating, just in case the huge guy found some other way across the creek. Troy wasn't sure if snowmobiles could pull that _Speed_ bus-clearing-the-bridge shit, but he wasn't waiting to find out.

He had been struggling through the woods for a short time, perhaps even less than ten minutes, when he had to blink to make sure his exhausted eyes weren't playing tricks on him. But no, those spots of yellow really were the luminescent lines of the highway and, he realized with another spike to his pulse, there was a car coming down it now.

~

The first twenty minutes of the ride passed in total silence. Jeff kept sneaking looks at Annie and Abed. Eventually the sound of Annie sniffling and the sight of Abed sitting so stiffly must have made him regret what he had said, or possibly the awkwardness had become too much for him.

"I know I said I would buy everyone ice cream if we actually found Troy," said Jeff. "I guess I could have at least left some time for you guys to steal that guy's pot or something. That was low of me, I know." This failed to break the silence. Both Annie and Abed refused to look at him, and in the rearview mirror he could see Britta roll her eyes. "Look, I'm sorry. I've been a little stressed out lately. There's this stem-changing boot thing--"

"Oh, sure," said Britta. "Blame it on the grammatical structures."

"Like they they didn't confuse the hell out of you, too," said Jeff. "That list of verbs he gave us was huge and he didn't even bother to organize them."

"They didn't confuse me because I, unlike you, can--"

"Look, I can't afford a new phone right now," said Jeff. "That's the long and short of it. And I know what you're going to say, Abed." Actually, Abed looked like he wouldn't ever say anything again; he was studying the trees and the side of the road. "You're going to say that I'm worrying about my material possessions more than a friend. That's completely untrue. I'm worried about Troy, too, but I definitely don't think we're going to find him here."

Abed finally spoke. "I'd stop the car if I were you."

Jeff sighed. "There was an outhouse back there, Abed, why didn't you use that?"

Annie had turned to look at what Abed had his eye on. She gave a small shriek. "Jeff, stop the car right now!"

"Are you--holy crap." He slammed on the brakes after he finally saw what Abed had apparently picked out among the lengthening shadows of the trees. Troy had come running out of the underbrush, but he had stumbled and landed on the narrow country road about ten feet away from where the car had stopped. As everyone stared in surprise, he picked himself up, dusted off his knees, and breathed in heavily a few times.

Shirley was the first to have a mildly sensible reaction. She opened her car door and shouted at him, "Where on Earth is your shirt? Are you _insane_?"

"I--was being--chased. By Nazis. Snowmobilers." He paused to catch his breath and seemed to realize that maybe his words weren't helping. He quickly got into the car as Pierce, Shirley, and Britta all scooted over to make room for him. "I'm not insane."

"He's drunk," said Pierce, looking rather harassed at being forced against the window.

"I'm not drunk."

"Smell his breath, make sure," said Jeff.

Britta leaned over and did so. "He smells okay."

"I smell fine! I'm not drunk, I got kidnapped."

"I knew it!"

"Shut it, Abed. What do you mean, kidnapped?"

"Who was it?" asked Annie excitedly. "Who grabbed you?"

Troy thought. "Well, I didn't really stick around long enough to learn their names. I think it was...Bill or Bob, or something. Then there was the guy who kicked me in the head."

Annie was disappointed. She turned to Abed and said, "You know, in mystery novels and things, the witnesses are always much better at remembering exactly what's happened to them and who they saw and what they looked like."

Britta grabbed Troy's chin. "That's a good point, Annie, but I think you've missed the bigger issue of _Troy getting kicked in the head_. Jesus Christ, are you all right?"

"I'm fine! Would you lay off?"

"Do you have a concussion?"

Troy rubbed his head and winced. "The guy said I didn't..."

"Who?"

Troy explained to them his theory. Annie shook her head. "No, Troy, it wasn't white supremacists. It was George Pluckenpole and the City College football team."

Troy blinked. "Really?" He looked disappointed.

"White supremacists probably would have made more sense," muttered Jeff, but Annie ignored him. She started explaining to Troy how they had figured it out.

"What you thought was a sheep was probably City College's mascot," Abed pointed out.

"Really?"

"Since they always referred to it as a 'he,' I'm guessing so. Sheep are always female."

"Wow," said Troy. "I can't believe you guys figured that all out."

"You're all wonderful detectives," said Shirley, beaming at Annie.

"Yeah," said Pierce. "Real Lord Steven Flimsys."

"Yeah," said Troy, but he looked confused. "Good call on that sheep, too."

Jeff looked like he'd had enough. "Look, we probably should--"

"What about your shirt?" Britta asked, cutting him off and obviously trying to hide a grin and failing pretty miserably.

"Oh my goodness," said Annie, turning to Abed. "We were right; it was partly because of sexual favors!"

Troy shook his head. "I think I lost it when I was running through a bunch of trees."

"Your shirt got _torn off_?" Britta did laugh now. "I'm sorry, I thought that only happened in action movies and, like, porno flicks."

"No one's in a porno flick!" Jeff massaged his forehead for a second. "OK, so--"

"I think I was promised ice cream," said Pierce suddenly.

"Yeah, and I think you owe Abed an apology," said Shirley.

"Look, I was being facetious about the ice--oh, all right. Abed, I'm sorry I ever doubted you. Obviously Troy having been kidnapped was the only sensible conclusion I could have drawn from everything. Now, Troy, I think we'll just take you back to your parents now, because I'm sure--"

"Forget it," said Troy, sitting back suddenly and folding his arms. "I'm not going home. Never again."

"Oh, Troy," said Shirley. "Where else are you going to live?"

"I'm gonna--I'm." He looked at Abed, who had been staring at him rather triumphantly, but whose expression was now unreadable again. "I--."

"Well, you think about where you want me to drop you off. You've got awhile to think about it," said Jeff. "It's a long ride back."

~

  
Two hours later, Jeff's conscience was apparently hurting him just enough that he ended up buying dinner for Troy and ice cream for everyone else, as he had promised. Although since Troy was still not wearing a shirt, they had to use Dairy Queen's drive-through.

Jeff finally pulled into Greendale's student parking lot at about ten. Everyone wished Troy good night and piled out and went to their own cars, except for Abed and Annie, who had left her bag in Abed's dorm room.

"Gosh, we were there all night. I completely forgot to get my mom her car back last night!" said Annie as she handed Jeff the Dilly bar she had been holding for him. She tittered nervously, but there was a slightly hysterical edge to it.

"Hey, come on," said Jeff, who correctly guessed that Annie had never taken her parents' car without permission before. "Do you think Sherlock Holmes ever let a case get unsolved just because his mom needed the car in the morning?"

"They didn't have cars back then."

"Carriages. Whatever. And I bet Steven Flimsy--"

"It's _Peter Wimsey_."

"Whatever."

Annie, making a valiant effort at looking serene, smiled at him. "Good night, Jeff." She closed the car door and followed Abed to the dorm entrance.

Troy still hadn't moved. Jeff assumed this was because he had fallen asleep, but it turned out that Troy was still in the backseat, staring at the hamburger Jeff had bought him. "Troy," began Jeff slowly. From the corner of his eye he could see that Abed had gotten halfway to the doors before turning around to stare intently at them, and Annie was standing at the doors, waiting for Abed to let her in and taking in the whole scene with an anxious look on her face. "Do you want me to drive you home?"

Troy shook his head. He looked as if he were in a trance, staring at the bag of food.

"Aren't you hungry?"

"No," which was the exact opposite of the truth. He opened the bag a little bit more and peeked in. "Damn."

"What?"

"Pierce stole my chicken nuggets. That bastard."

Jeff looked at Troy, then out the window at Abed. "Look, Troy, is there something that you should be telling me? About--." He nodded towards the window. "Because he's been acting...weird. Weirder. Not just in general, but weird specifically about you."

Troy shrugged. "It was--we're just. We've been--." He took a deep breath. "Me and Abed--"

Jeff held up his hand. "Before you go on, I just want to point out that you're sitting in my car without a shirt and covered in French fry grease. Obviously I'll offer my full support in any case, and it's fine if this is how you want to come out to me, but just consider that you really only get to do this once."

Troy rubbed his eyes and suddenly looked very tired. "I'm going to stay here tonight. Thanks, Jeff."

"No problem. I'm glad you're all right, Troy." Jeff watched the three of them go up to the dorm together and then drove away.

~

  
In Abed's dorm room, Troy found the packet Annie and Abed had made for everyone earlier that morning. She watched him read it while he ate a French fry and she gathered up her bag.

"What do you think?" she asked, finally.

At first he was almost shocked to see her and sounded very drowsy and disoriented even to his own ears. "It's...good. I mean, I can't believe you guys figured all this out." He paused. "_How_\--"

"It was mostly Abed," said Annie. "And I...um, Googled." And abused her copier privileges at the newspaper, but Troy didn't need to know that. She blushed. Like many acts of heroism, it all seemed a little dumb in retrospect.

"_Fourteen_ pages..." he said.

"We wanted to dispel...any question." She trailed off. "I guess it was all a little--"

"No, no. Dude, you did it all like it was a school project or something."

Annie smiled again. This was exactly the sort of comparison she had been hoping to inspire, in fact. "Well, you might as well stick with what you know." When Troy, seized with that type of drowsiness that inspires immense affection, suddenly hugged her, she was at first surprised and then just a little bemused, not amazed or pleased or terrified, as she would have been if a shirtless Troy had embraced her even three months ago. "Are you really going to move out?" she asked him after a suitable interval.

He stiffened in her arms. "I guess."

"What are you going to do about George?"

"Well, I don't know," said Troy. He let go of her. "What am I supposed to do? Kick him off the team, I guess." He started pacing, then, the way he had been pacing earlier that week when he had been worrying Abed initially about the new guy. "Where'd Abed go, anyway?"

"He said he had to get something downstairs." Annie had been about to leave, but for a few seconds she watched his pacing with increasing consternation. "Why are you so nervous about moving in with Abed? Abed lets lots of people move in with him." This was true. Abed had let Jeff when Jeff had lost his apartment, and he would have given the bottom bunk to a homeless man he met in the quad once if Shirley and Annie hadn't been there to talk him out of it. (The homeless man had eventually been cast as Vaughn in Abed's film, leaving everyone happy except Annie herself.)

"It might be a bit...different than that. If you know what I mean."

"_Oh_," she said, although the look of sudden enlightenment on her face was partly put on for his benefit. "Well, good. I'm happy for you."

"Yeah." Troy looked sleepily pensive for a second. "I suppose you're a little...jealous. And stuff."

"No, not really."

"What, not even a little?"

She shook her head. "Good night, Troy. If you need help on the stem-changing boot verb quiz on Friday, just let me know, all right?"

"Thanks," said Troy, and it wasn't until several minutes later, when he was nearly asleep and Abed was still absent on his mysterious errand, that he said out loud, "Wait, stem-changing _what?_?"

~

  
When Abed finally came back to the room, he found Troy asleep. He tried to quietly set down the muffins, which he had managed to recover from the girls down the hall, but Troy sat up, blinking, almost immediately.

"Wazzat? Oh." He rubbed his eyes. "Sorry."

"It's okay. Are you hungry?"

"Yeah. Holy shit, yes." Troy dove into the muffin basket. Sleeping for even a very short while had apparently reminded him just how hungry he was. "Where did you even get this?"

Abed shrugged. "I had to call in a favor, actually. It's all right, I figured you were hungry." He paused. "I usually turn on the TV before I go to bed. Is that all right?"

Troy nodded and moved over to make room for Abed on the futon. "I was reading yours and Annie's...report thingy."

"I thought she did a good job."

"Sure. But she said you were the one who figured everything out. I mean, that you were the one who had all the hunches and stuff, originally."

Abed shrugged and grabbed a muffin.

"But _how_?" asked Troy.

"It seemed obvious, I guess."

"What did?"

"Usually in movies or something," began Abed, addressing his muffin, "when one person disappears, it's because something beyond their power has happened to them, like they've been kidnapped or--"

"This is real life, Abed, it's not a movie or something."

"And usually," said Abed, still resolutely examining the muffin, "that person disappears before the other person gets to tell them that they love them."

Troy paused to let that sink in. When Abed finally looked at him, his face was a curious mixture of emotion: first he looked a little confused, then hesitant, and finally his face got a faraway look before finally breaking into an almost boastful smile. "That's really, um. I guess I never even thought of that." Just a few moments before, Troy had been only just barely sleeping; his half-awake mind had been preoccupied with thoughts of his father and football and irregular grammatical structures, but Abed's words seemed to open up a serene, unworried plain in his mind. "You know, fuck it," Troy said. Abed tilted his head and stared at him as Troy grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. "I don't feel like watching _Fresh Prince_ reruns."

"Then what--oh." Troy had pinned him down in one quick movement, and Abed's breath hitched in his throat as Troy pinned his wrists down. "I think this was a good choice," said Abed between kisses. "I didn't like that episode." Troy had moved onto his neck and was nibbling Abed's ear when he said that.

Troy mumbled something that sounded like agreement before returning to Abed's neck. It was notoriously hard to get Abed to lose his train of thought, but Troy seemed to enjoy trying.

"I mean," Abed went on when Troy kissed his sternum and moved down to his stomach, "I definitely would have turned it off anyway."

"Definitely," said Troy as he drew Abed's T-shirt up for him.

"Even if it had been a really good episode," said Abed, an uncontrollable tremor entering his voice as Troy's hands traveled back up his torso. "Even if it had been that episode of _Cheers_ where Sam goes on vacation and leaves Woody in charge of the bar."

"Mhmm," murmured Troy into his abdomen, and the nice thing about Troy was that occasionally he was very good at hearing the sentiment behind the words rather than the words themselves. "I know, Abed," he said, even though Abed knew for a fact that he had never even seen an episode of _Cheers_. Just the words were enough to distract Abed from what he had been saying. Troy's voice wasn't deep, but it was throaty and raspy and almost syrupy in a way, which was the only thing Abed could think of even as Troy unzipped his fly for him and took Abed's cock into his mouth.

"Oh," he said, his own voice sounding cracked and high-pitched, but he was past caring. Troy responded by pumping the base of Abed's cock with his hand, and it occurred to him that Troy was pretty good at this, too. He was still thinking this even as he came, surprising himself but not Troy, apparently. "Thank you," was all he could think to say, and it felt pretty dumb.

"'S no problem," Troy muttered, obviously not caring because he sounded half-asleep. His expression was heavy-lidded but happy. He curled against Abed's side and rested his head on Abed's shoulder.

Part of Abed wanted to get up, maybe take his jeans the rest of the way off, but another part of him, a part that was still drowsy from his orgasm and was rapidly developing a better sense for these sort of things, made him never want to move again. It made him want to lay there with Troy wrapped around him like the blanket they didn't have and would probably miss if they were going to spend the night like this.

"Troy," he said. "Come here. We can sleep on the bed."

"I'm all right," he mumbled, briefly drawing both arms around Abed and squeezing. "It's okay."

"I know," said Abed, and with some complicated wriggling he was able to get his jeans all of the way off without disturbing Troy. With his foot he poked around under the futon and found some of his mother's old caftans that he had taken because he knew his father wouldn't miss them or even acknowledge their existence. He pulled them up and carefully draped them over himself and Troy. They fell asleep and both were awoken early the next morning by the girl down the hall, who was looking for Abed to return her muffin basket.

~

  
The next two days were eventful, even in comparison with the last two. George Pluckenpole quit the football team early Thursday morning, after he found Troy in the dorm room eating cereal. He gave his resignation in quiet, stilted words, and set down both Troy and Jeff's cell phones on the desk before Troy could even process that he was there. Pluckenpole apologized and left the room, and Troy never saw him again.

Britta, acting on a tip from Abed, returned to the Pluckenpole cabin sometime later that day. When two Colorado State Troopers, acting on an anonymous tip, raided the cabin later the next week, about half of the plentiful crop that Abed and the others had discovered there was gone, and Britta, noticeably, never had to ask Vaughn to deal her anything again.

Thanks to Annie's helpfully color-coded notes, Troy got a B minus on the stem-changing verb quiz on Friday, and everyone managed to avoid getting the boot to the head. That evening the Human Beings pulled off a surprising and not completely unsatisfying victory against the City College Goats, upsetting most expectations and marking their third win of the whole season. In the midst of the bravado the win inspired, Troy finally returned to his parents' house to tell them he was moving into the dorm. It went both better and worse than he expected; in the end, he received a wordless grunt from his father, which had to pass for a blessing in this case, and a care package from his mother, which included some of her own caftans and a few liters of the Squirt he was pretty sure she had bought at a Sam's Club in his sophomore year and had been trying to foist off on him ever since. He returned home in a daze, perhaps because he knew that from now on he could think of this smelly little dorm room as home.

His mother _did_ give him her blessing, in her own way, and if she knew somehow or other that one of the bunks usually went unused every night, she didn't let on.


End file.
